


Figurine, in Reality

by skaralding



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkwardness, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Secret Crush, Slytherin Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: And then the Hat said “Slytherin!” Not for Blaise, not yet, but for the person he’d never ever expected it to say it for.For Potter. ForHarriet Potter.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 400





	Figurine, in Reality

**Author's Note:**

> An oldie I dug up from my eternal WIP folder after simmering in the ongoing discussion re fanon about pureblood culture, only to find that what I'd written did quite well as a narrowly focused one-shot that mainly revolves around that first, explosive, she-was-just-sorted- _here_ reaction. After [posting on meme](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/430553.html?thread=2557939417#cmt2557939417), I decided to put it up here in its entirety as well.
> 
> I've tagged it for a 'secret crush' since that's the implication I wrote it with, but it can absolutely be read otherwise. So please do enjoy Blaise Zabini's repressed fangirling about a mysteriously adept Harriet ;D

Blaise was very careful to appear not to believe in fairytales. His Harriet Potter figurine, the flashy jewelled one his mother gave him on his ninth birthday, had moved locations as often as they had had guests at his home. Which wasn’t often; his mother, Elladora Zabini, the woman they called the Black Widow, was a fêted, dashingly fascinating party guest, but not the sort of woman whose dinner you would gladly attend. “Imagine,” he’d once heard Mrs. Parkinson whisper to Mrs. Bulstrode, “imagine what on earth she might do if one failed to compliment the soup—!”

So Harriet had often posed on his mantle, among lions and mermaids and goblins, and rarely ever visited the insides of his older trunk. She was there now, nestled amongst his pathetic chocolate frog card collection, wrapped in an old green handkerchief, the silk one, so she would be comfortable. So that when he finally met her, he could hold that ridiculous image of her in his head and smile at her like his mother had taught him: coolly.

 _And then,_ his foolish imagination dared to say, _and then she’d blush, and stumble her words, and she’d have a crush on me, and look at me from the Ravenclaw_ (or, if he was being utterly realistic, Hufflepuff) _table, and wonder and wonder and wish._

Clearly, that last month away from Ms. Kittredge’s classroom had made him forget just how relentlessly devoted Draco was to ruining any and every fantasy.

“Why don’t we find her now?” Draco was saying, his properly still upper body betrayed by the way he kept knocking his foot against the seat under him. “I bet she’s nothing much, but it’d be a hoot if I could drag her down here. We could figure out where she’s been hiding.”

“Where she’s been hidden, you mean,” Theo corrected, looking up from his well worn copy of Budge’s _Book of Potions_. “Do you really think they’d have given her a choice?”

“Well, fine, you know what I meant,” Draco said, impatiently. “Anyone coming?”

“ _I_ don’t see why we have to run off looking for her,” Pansy said, her tone more than haughty enough to compensate for the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to turn up her nose at Draco. “You’ll just miss her on the way, you know.”

But of course, Draco was already going, and Vincent and Greg were already heaving to their feet to follow him, like a pair of heavy wagons trundling after a particularly nervy horse. “Come on, if you’re coming,” he said, holding the door open for them, and when no one followed, he just turned up his nose at the whole carriage. “Fine, then,” he said. “I won’t bother to bring her back.”

And then he was through the door, with it grinding closed after him, and Blaise could breathe again from behind his angry, cheated haze. _Idiot_ , he told himself. _You could have ‘gone to the toilet’ five times before he got it in his head to go exploring, and look where you are. Stuck in your seat._

On top of that, he had Daphne Greengrass sneaking little sideways looks at him from two seats over, as if having a book open in front of you wasn’t something nearly everyone in the carriage was already doing. Hers had been open to a violently coloured picture for at least fifteen minutes, despite how she kept fiddling with the position.

He’d have liked to make it all Daphne’s fault. She was really far too pretty herself to be doing that, to be staring and blinking and blushing a little, and honestly, Blaise had been sort of enjoying it before Draco mentioned Potter and started him thinking about who else could have been eyeing him like that.

So it wasn’t Daphne’s fault, not really. And it was cruel of him to pointedly ignore her, instead of ‘fanning the flames’ the way Mum always talked about, but the thought of Draco being the one to dazzle Potter hurt so much that it made Blaise want to hurt someone else, just to pass it on.

So he did. Carefully. And he told himself that he would do the same thing to everyone else at dinner, so that Daphne didn’t feel singled out. And he comforted himself with the fact that putting up this cold, uncaring front was basically how he’d planned to start the year anyway. _Oh, Blaise,_ Mum had always said, _don’t **talk**. Let your image do the talking, you come off so much better._ And while hearing that had often hurt, it had given him ideas, given him a way to stand out without talking, without revealing himself. Dinner, he had originally thought, would be a good time to start, but even now, he could lay the—what had Mum liked to call it—the foundation.

* * *

And then the Hat said “Slytherin!” Not for Blaise, not yet, but for the person he’d never ever expected it to say it for.

For Potter. For _Harriet Potter._

Clearly the whole hall felt the same way Blaise did, because no one so much as breathed as Potter—so, _so_ much shorter in real life than he’d imagined—took her first few steps towards the Slytherin tables. The silence was so great that he actually heard each step, heard the muted click and scuff as she walked, no, strode, over to her new house.

When the usual applause finally came in, it was scattered, little claps and smacks all but swallowed by the rising whispers that followed her. The whispers buzzed amongst the first years too, the small group that was still left. “But she’s…” Blaise could hear someone whispering, behind him, “she can’t really be a _Slytherin_.”

“Why not?” he found himself saying back, sounding more serious than he would have liked. And, when they answered him—“what do you mean why not? Your house—” (even though he hadn’t even been sorted) “— _You-Know-Who_ was a Slytherin!”—Blaise thought, _all right, think, think hard, there’s got to be a reason_.

But he couldn’t think of one. He thought confusedly of the Harriet figurine, the one he’d wrapped and stored in darkness, but abruptly remembered that the handkerchief he’d used had actually been a nice dark brown, not dark green. Not Slytherin, not really. So instead, Blaise turned and eyed the girl that had been sputtering at him, and said, very easily, with just the right amount of amusement, “So?” And, when the girl flushed angrily, he rolled his eyes. “Sorry. It’s just, well, what does it really matter?”

The angry disappointment on that girl’s face was the equal of the glee he felt inside. That stupid, stupid feeling agreed with her; when she stamped off to be sorted, it danced. When he walked towards the Hat, the last of all of them, it wanted to express itself by making him skip.

When the Hat said sly things about loyalty and how deeply it ran in him, it kept Blaise from feeling the old fears he’d always nursed, the ones that had him wondering whether he could make it in Slytherin, or whether he was better off being the harmless, good-looking Hufflepuff that, oh no, wasn’t planning on following in Mum’s footsteps, or at least not obviously doing so.

When the Hat hemmed and hawed, Blaise just smiled. And said, very quietly, “but you know where I’d really fit, don’t you?” just like he’d planned, the only thing at all this evening that had actually gone to plan.

That the Hat sighed and gave in, and named him Slytherin too, alongside Harriet Potter… Blaise thought that his first introduction to her could go down in flames and he’d still go to bed smiling.

The glee subsided eventually. It had to; there was Dumbledore, and his distractingly ridiculous speech; there was Draco, and his wide grey eyes and barely restrained impatience, one question following another before Potter could even open her mouth to answer the first one.

There was Potter herself, her small, stick-straight form, her mouth more closed than not, her eyes on her plate, but not in the way of someone who was nervous or cowed. She expressed more interest in the treacle tart than in Draco’s increasingly annoyed questions, and he seemed to realize it sooner than Blaise had been expecting, possibly because Draco was actually paying attention to who he was talking to instead of blathering away like usual.

“Come on, Potter,” he said eventually, while she poured a bit of cream over her tart, taking the sort of close, loving care of someone serious about their sweets. “You have to give us _something_. I mean, really, where could you have been that you couldn’t give even a hint?”

“I’m eating,” she said, without even looking up. “That can wait.” And she dug in to the tart, cutting neatly, with such steady, elegant slices that Blaise found himself imagining her secreted away in Ms. Kittredge’s back room, listening keenly to their etiquette lessons and practising on her own in strict, worshipful silence, all while they stamped their feet and threw down forks and whined about lunch without knowing who was also eating lunch a few feet away.

“It can’t wait,” Draco said, crossly. “ _I’m_ asking you.”

“Yeah?” Potter said, dismissively. “And who are you?”

 _That_ , Blaise thought, to himself, _must be why she’s in Slytherin._

As the evening went on, there were more moments in that vein. Potter had a way of saying outrageously arrogant things and then somehow managing to make them sound completely innocent. When she’d asked who Draco was, she’d raised her eyebrows for only a split second, and then frowned as Draco sputtered in response. Then she’d said, “really, though, who are you?” And added, “You keep acting like you know who I am, but I’m not sure I even know your name.”

Naturally, Draco had stumbled over himself in the haste to be introduced, and, when Potter shrugged at him about it, he gladly went on to introduce everyone else. And the pointed looks he’d given people had goaded them to either wave or nod at Potter; his eyes had said, ‘do NOT embarrass me with Potter’, and the odd, distant way Potter had peered at them had somehow made them all fall in line.

It helped that Potter nodded back at everyone, with one serious, elegant forward dip that made Blaise feel as if he were stuck in a corner of one of his dreams, watching The Great Harriet Potter meet the peasantry. It shouldn’t have suited her at all. It should have been ridiculous. And from the stony way Pansy was eyeing Potter’s starchy, standard robes and slightly ragged bob, it would become ridiculous as soon as they headed down to the dorms.

Blaise half wished he could warn Pansy in a way that she’d listen to. _It won’t work,_ was all he could think to say. _She’s not the kind of girl you can hurt by laughing at._ But then, it wasn’t like he knew Potter. Maybe her methodical eating and earnest little nods were how she went about things when she was nervous.

“You have a snake, don’t you?” Draco was asking Potter now, heedless of the fact that his wide-eyed attention was likely sealing Potter’s social fate. “I heard people talking about it on the train, but I didn’t think…”

“Oh,” Potter said, her eyebrows rising, “well, she’s—I mean, they told me she was a girl—and I almost wasn’t allowed to bring her.” She was patting herself now, as if she were searching for something. “I had to beg and beg Professor McGonagall, and even then it meant that I couldn’t have an owl as well.”

Blaise was expecting it when she pulled out the small case from her right robe pocket. He wasn’t expecting the case itself to be made of silvered, delicate-looking glass, its thin walls providing just enough room for a brightly coloured garter snake to curl and writhe, slithering back from the gasps and mutters of what felt like half the Slytherin table.

“Isn’t she just lovely?” Potter crowed, hunching over her prize. And then she was hissing at it, and not in an encouraging, ‘everything’s all right, silly’ sort of way. The hisses were rough, low, and long. Far too long.

And the snake was responding, uncurling. It put its head forward, hissing something back, and Potter gave it a quick, barely-there grin, thumping the spot next to its head with no fear, and no real reaction from the snake, other than one last, annoyed-sounding hiss.

Predictably, Draco was the one to break the sudden, charged silence. “Merlin, Potter,” he said, in a forced, casual tone. “It’s almost as if you’re trying to talk to it.”

Potter gave him a disbelieving look. “Well, obviously I am,” she said, pressing her hand against the side of the case, as if she wished she could reach inside. “Weren’t you listening?”

“Not as if she can talk back, though, is it?” Theo interjected, his eyes hard, his gaze glued to Potter’s face.

“Were you really not listening?” Potter said, looking from Theo to Blaise, and then to Daphne, and then to Pansy. “She just said—”

The snake hissed again, quietly, and Potter pursed her lips, as if she were trying not to laugh. “You all smell interesting, according to her,” she said, carefully. “Very… Very, um…”

“You can’t actually talk to her,” Pansy said, impatiently. “You’re a Potter. There’s no way you’re a Parselmouth.”

“What does my last name have to do with anything?” Potter said, sounding truly perplexed. “And I was talking to her. You all heard me.”

“We heard you pretending to hiss,” Pansy said, matter-of-factly. “How stupid do you think we are?”

“When have I hissed?” Potter said, frowning deeply. “I just said, you know, stuff. Like ‘oh, you’re the prettiest thing’. Because she eats all that up.” And then she bent over her snake again, hissing loudly, a soft smile on her face.

“But,” Pansy said, faintly, not quite loud enough to be heard over the sound of Potter’s contorted, deliberate hisses. “You—you can’t—”

The snake hissed back. Rubbed itself against the walls. And when Harriet thumped a short, quiet pattern against it, it writhed, turning and thumped the exact same pattern back. Then hissed again, in the growing quiet, then curled around itself and went pointedly still.

“See?” Potter said, looking over at Pansy. “She just eats it all up. Think I could get her to jump in the lake if I made her believe it’d shine up her scales.”

That was when Blaise believed her. It was too much, her oddly disjointed conversation mingling meaningfully with the pattern she’d drummed on the lid of the snake case, the pattern that had been answered. It helped that she didn’t seem desperate to be believed, that she was meeting Pansy’s disbelieving gaze head on, with an easy, triumphant smile that showed she thought the only thing important here was that she’d won the argument.

“You can’t,” Pansy said, shaking her head, and Potter sighed out loud.

“I’m not making her perform for you anymore,” Potter said, giving the case one last, loving pat. “Not if you’re going to keep on being silly.” Then, as she tucked the case back into her pocket, she hissed down at it. The snake hissed back. And she looked up at Draco, a shifty expression on her face. “Are we allowed to take food to our dorms?”

“Food?” Draco said. “Potter—do you not know what a Parselmouth is?”

She sighed again. “Isn’t it obvious?” she said, impatiently. “No, I don’t know. Are we not allowed to take things back?”

Draco swallowed. “A Parselmouth is someone who can speak to snakes. Someone who understands their language.”

Potter frowned at him. “Snakes don’t have a language,” she said. “They just talk.”

“Where on earth can you have _been_?” Theo said, leaning forward. “Someone should have told you by now that it wasn’t common. That you’re—you’re—”

“You said you had to beg McGonagall,” Pansy said, drawn in despite herself. “Why didn’t she tell you?”

“I don’t know,” Potter said, giving the two of them uneasy looks. “She wasn’t at mine all that long, just long enough to help me get my things.”

“How long have you had the snake?” Draco said, eagerly. “If you bought it—”

“I didn’t,” Potter said, her tone wary. “Found her in the garden a few months ago.”

Blaise opened his mouth, then slowly shut it. He desperately wanted to add to the conversation, to say something to catch Potter’s attention, but nothing clever came to mind. Every time one of the others asked Potter a question, it was one of the few things he’d been thinking of saying.

“This must be why you’re in Slytherin,” Draco said, just as Blaise was nerving himself to try and say the exact same thing. _Lucky I didn’t,_ he told himself. _It sounds really stupid._

But he didn’t truly believe it until Potter gave Draco an incredulous sideways look, as if she’d never heard anything as silly as what he’d said. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, looking down at her plate, making one more neat slice in the last piece of her tart. “It wouldn’t make sense if that was all it was.”

“Why not?” Blaise said, hastily, deciding that it was now or never. “Slytherin was a Parselmouth too.”

She didn’t even look at him. “Suppose I could talk to snakes, but all I wanted most tonight was to be in my best friend’s house,” she said, quietly. “Do I sound like a Slytherin?”

Obviously she didn’t. But Blaise didn’t want to agree, didn’t want to just go along with her point, since that wouldn’t make him stand out to her. “Why do you think you’re here, then, if it’s not because you’re a Parselmouth?”

When she looked over at him, he found himself fighting the urge to squirm. Her green eyes were cold and clear, and seemed to bore right through him. “Obviously,” she said, with a wry smile, “I have an ambition.”

“For what?” Draco demanded, in a way that would have ruined the moment if Potter hadn’t gone still, a look of annoyance flashing over her face. “You barely answered anything I asked, and now you’re—”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Potter said, looking back down at her plate. “I’m going to save the world.” She stabbed her fork into her last piece of tart, then raised it, gesturing in Draco’s direction. “Look. I’ve defeated my first enemy.”

Theo was the first one to laugh, then smother it with his hand, as if that would be enough to disguise it. Draco glared at Potter as muffled laughter made the rounds, echoed eagerly by the second years that had been listening to the whole thing from the start.

Blaise had to force himself to take his eyes off Potter, so as not to look like he might be just as angry at her as Draco was. But he couldn’t help feeling that way, feeling utterly cheated. She’d dodged his own question so neatly that he couldn’t say anything about it without looking like an idiot, the way she’d immediately made Draco look when he’d pushed his luck. It wasn’t how he’d imagined her, not at all, not this poised, smiling terror that stabbed around herself with words as if she had been doing it for years already.

“Sorry,” she was saying now, to Draco. “Couldn’t resist. It’s just, well, we’re not friends, or anything, just yet, and you already know a lot more about me than I do about you. And it’s a weird thing to ask.”

“It isn’t—”

“I mean, you can’t tell me you go around asking, ‘oh, what’s your ambition, then’. Not unless you’re trying to insult someone.”

Draco shut his mouth with a click. “I was only curious, Potter,” he said, coolly. “Is that not allowed?”

“Not while I’m trying to eat,” was Potter’s wry, half-muttered response, and that was enough to start the second years laughing again. “I mean, really, what do you expect? I said I’d talk later.”

“Right,” Pansy said, waving dismissively in Potter’s direction. “Never mind her, Draco. Tell me about what happened in Spain instead; you never did finish on the way here.”

With that, Draco seemed to finally pull himself together. “All right,” he said, easily, turning deliberately away from Potter. “Where was I, again…?”

Potter noticed, of course. She slid a sideways glance in Theo’s direction, as if to say, ‘is this what he’s always like?’, and Theo’s eyes fairly sparkled at the fact that she’d chosen to share the joke with him. “So,” he said, loud enough that Pansy and Draco couldn’t pretend they couldn’t hear him, “where _have_ you been living all these years, Potter?”

“Nowhere special,” she said. “I live with my aunt, always have. Surrey.”

“Your aunt? I hadn’t heard of any other Potters.”

“Why would she have to be a Potter? Even if she weren’t married, she’d be an Evans, like my mum.”

Theo frowned. “They can’t have put you with your mother’s, er, side. They wouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?” Potter said, impatiently. “There wasn’t anyone else.”

“They wouldn’t have,” Theo said, his tone insistent. “She can’t really be your aunt. She’d have to be a muggle, if she really was your aunt. They wouldn’t have left Harriet Potter with _muggles_.”

“They did,” Potter said, in a tone that would have seemed calm if Blaise hadn’t been watching her. Her eyes had gone curiously flat, and she was looking at Theo as if she was thinking of hitting him.

Theo seemed to have been watching her as well, because he looked a little paler than he had when he’d commandeered Potter’s attention. “Did they, then?” was all he said, hastily. “How… how strange.”

“Nothing strange about it,” Potter said, in that too-calm tone. “Family’s family, and there wasn’t anyone else.” It was almost as if she was saying that partly to herself. “Are we allowed to take food up with us?”

Theo relaxed. “They don’t stop you,” he said. “But I’d keep it hidden if I were you. It’d get cleared away by the elves if you didn’t.”

Potter blinked at him. “Elves…?”

Theo started to give her an impatient nod, then stopped. “You don’t…?”

“No,” Potter said, smiling. “Look, how’s this: instead of asking if I do know something, could you just skip it and act like I don’t?”

Theo let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “I suppose I could,” he said. “I suppose we all could, couldn’t we?” Because by then, Draco had stopped pretending not to be listening, and he wasn’t the only one staring at Potter with wide eyes.

“You lived with muggles,” he said now, almost reverently. “You really did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Potter, dryly, “I, er, think.” And the rush of questions that followed only seemed to amuse her instead of annoy her the way they had been when it was only Draco asking.

Blaise listened to the noise with his head down, barely understanding half of it, his mind a confused jumble. With every extra smile and joke that Potter handed out, he found himself less and less enthralled, less trusting. She was too good at it, too good at dividing her attention.

She wasn’t pretty, not really. Not like Daphne, at least. Her mouth was slightly crooked even when she didn’t smile, and she was unfashionably tanned. Her dark hair swished about her nodding head, the long, ragged fringe parting now and then to reveal the ugly lines of the scar on her forehead. And yet…

When she smiled at Draco, and then at Pansy, she reminded him of Mum. _Controlled,_ he kept thinking. _She doesn’t do anything by accident._ Which was Mum all over, no matter how plain Potter was.

It felt wrong. Just wrong. _She’s our age,_ Blaise thought, _but she’s so… deliberate._ And though she _was_ Harriet Potter, he’d still thought—still imagined, rather, that she’d be a little like anyone their age that was made to sit in a room full of strangers. Shy. Nervous. Wanting to make friends.

This Potter wouldn’t just make friends. She would do this—capture them. Hold them. Rule them, the way Mum ruled everyone that came close enough, with her bright smiles, her carefully bestowed attentions, her small frowns.

Blaise didn’t know whether he liked that idea. He hadn’t been stupid enough to imagine being friends with Potter, but he’d thought he’d try to be on speaking terms with her, not visibly, not obviously, but in a way that suited his image. He couldn’t see himself doing that with her now, not with how she actually was. He’d be too afraid that she would see what he was doing, and look at him with laughing, almost pitying eyes, the way Mum did to some of the men that tried to flirt with her.

“Blaise, isn’t it?” Potter said, her light tone breaking through his jumbled haze. “Is there something you wanted to ask? You’re staring.”

“No,” Blaise said, kicking himself for not paying attention. “Wool gathering, sorry.”

“Really?” Potter asked, her tone sceptical. “There’s not something on my face, or…?”

Theo sniggered, and everyone else followed suit. Blaise thought of how he must have looked, staring right across at her, as if he couldn’t look away from the obvious scar above her eyes, the one everyone had likely been sneaking peeks at all night. “Sorry,” he said again, wryly. “That’s got to get annoying, doesn’t it? People staring at the scar?”

Potter smiled, shrugging easily, but her eyes were distant, and she was already turning away. And Blaise, despite knowing he couldn’t impress her, despite already having decided to stop trying, found himself feeling deflated. Hurt.

“I know why you’re in Slytherin,” he said, casually. And tried not to feel the rush he did when she turned her curious gaze back on him. “And I don’t think it’s just to save the world.”

“Really,” Potter said, as if she couldn’t care less. “What do you think it is?”

“Girls like you don’t only save the world,” he said, leaning back. “Why settle for that when you can rule it?”

For a moment, he’d thought he’d thrown Potter for a loop, a proper one. Her pretended disinterest had dropped away, leaving an unreadable look in her sharp green eyes. Then she sighed, and gave him a crooked smile. “Is it that obvious?”

“Just a bit,” Blaise said, unwilling to back down. “What would you do first?”

She lifted her chin. “As Queen,” she said, pompously, “I would outlaw carrots.”

Blaise didn’t know how he kept from breaking into a smug grin. That was as clear a dismissal as he’d got all evening, but it was precious because it was so clear, so pointed. So very much for him.

“Not even Minister, then, Potter?” Pansy was saying, sourly. “The Queen hadn’t really ruled anything in decades.”

“Then I take it back,” Potter said, tossing her hair. “The first thing I’d really do is ban all ministers. Behead them all, whatever, and _then_ ban carrots.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Draco said, half frowning, half smiling. “You couldn’t get away with that.”

“I would,” Potter said. “Who could stop me?”

“Anyone,” Pansy said, sounding annoyed. “Everyone,” Theo said, thoughtfully. But neither of them looked like they believed what they were saying, not with Potter looking round at them like that, with that small, calm smile.

 _No one,_ Blaise thought. _No one will stop her._

And they didn’t.


End file.
